Pierre-Alain Bertola began his career as an architect. In 1988 he started
working with graphics and illustrations. He subsequently published two albums of
comic strips with the Paris-based publishers Futuropolis/Gallimard before
illustrating a series of books for the Journal de Genève for the
Geneva-based Joie de lire and the Paris-based Autrement. His
drawings have been exhibited in galleries and museums both in Switzerland and
throughout the world; his participation in the exhibition XX Comix at the
Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris in 1997 is worthy of particular mention.Being
highly skilled in various spheres of the applied arts has helped Pierre-Alain
Bertola to design many museum exhibitions. The most recent, Help, was
organised by the International Museum of the Red Cross and came to a close in
January 2005. Together with the Atelier Bontron et Co he created the
scenery for the Rolex Award for Enterprise prize-giving ceremony in 1999 and
2002 in New York and for the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative
prize-giving ceremony in 2003 and 2005, also in New York. Be it books,
exhibitions or set designs, Bertola always imbues his work with a poetic feel.
His sets for Alain Maratrat´s production of Il viaggio a Reims at the
Mariinsky Theatre are his first work in the opera genre.